Stop the Narrowing of the Curriculum by ‘Right-Sizing’ School Time

These days, the loudest rallying cry against
the No Child Left Behind Act, and standards-based reform in general, is the persistent
claim that the law’s reliance on
testing and emphasis on reading and math are
driving a “narrowing of the curriculum.” According
to this view, core subjects like English and
mathematics are being overemphasized at the
expense of other subjects, and of educating the
“whole child.” The implied antidote is to lower
the bar: have less, or softer, performance accountability
and a lower standard to take the
pressure off educators, reduce the time spent on
core subjects, and make room for other important
parts of the curriculum, such as the arts,
foreign languages, and social studies.

The logic of this well-intentioned response
to a legitimate problem has two flaws: It assumes
that students can go forward and be successful
at the next stage of their lives with substandard
proficiency in core subjects, and it
treats school time in its current form as absolutely
immutable.

—Steven Braden

I interpret the facts a bit differently. There is
compelling evidence on the narrowing of the
curriculum. More time is undeniably going to
core subjects, especially in schools where students
are struggling to meet basic standards.
Why? Because the new basic standard is considerably
higher than previous expectations,
and it now applies to all students. Teachers are
understandably discovering that it’s going to
take far more time to guarantee that each and
every student achieves proficiency in the gateway
subjects now considered the standard. In
other words, they need the extra time to
achieve the basic goal.

The mission of our schools, at a minimum,
should be achieving the goal of proficiency in reading
and math for all students. Such proficiency is
necessary for students to succeed in other subjects,
in higher education, and in their later employment.
Simply achieving proficiency in these areas,
however, is totally insufficient and does not, by
any stretch of the imagination, constitute a full education.
The question then becomes: How do we
allow enough time to achieve proficiency in “gateway”
subjects, while making room for the other
coursework and competencies that are critical ingredients
in a well-rounded, fully enriched education
for all children?

It seems logical to conclude that if we want
schools to do more than simply get all students
to proficiency in reading and math, and we do,
then we will have to give them more time for
instruction in other subjects, as well as an
array of enrichment activities. Our relatively
arbitrary school schedule is not well-sized to
meet these 21st-century objectives for learning.
To be sure, there are some schools that need to
make better use of existing time. But on average,
a decade or more into this era of standards-based
reform, educators are working hard and
efficiently, and are finding that the instructional
clock doesn’t adequately accommodate
today’s academic demands. It takes more time
to educate all students to a high standard of
performance in core subjects, to adequately address
a broad array of additional subjects, and
to provide the kind of enriched education that
most parents want for their children.

The answer to the current “narrowing of the curriculum”
problem is not to abandon our fundamental
commitment to a high standard of excellence
and equity, embodied in our aspiration to achieve
proficiency for all students. We should not consider
lowering standards in basic subjects as a solution
to the time problem in education. To do so would be
to harm the very children that reform is designed
especially to help. Instead, we should provide to
each child the quality and quantity of instructional
time needed to achieve our ambitious and wide-ranging
goals for student learning. This is going to
mean significantly expanded learning time to
match our significantly expanded 21st-century
learning goals—and particularly for those children
with the biggest learning gaps.

Such a change is far easier said than done. It
means grappling with the inadequacy of education’s
current time paradigm, something the National
Education Commission on Time and
Learning challenged the nation to do more than
a dozen years ago. We have made little progress
on the educational time frontier since that commission's 1994 report declared our schools to be “prisoners of time.” But a new opportunity is at
hand. The reauthorization of the
No Child Left Behind Act represents
an ideal moment for a
vigorous national conversation
on right-sizing school time to
meet the enhanced demands on
schools and students in this era
of high expectations for all.

Educators are working hard and efficiently, and are finding that the instructional clock doesn’t adequately accommodate today’s academic demands.

A reauthorized NCLB could strike
a major blow for equity by breaking
the barriers of our one-size-fits-all
time paradigm. The next phase
of education reform should begin
with leaders calibrating the time
requirements necessary to broadly
and fully educate all children to sufficiently
high standards to participate,
thrive, and succeed in our society.
No Child Left Behind might
enable both the federal and state
governments to seed demonstration
projects that make more time available
to schools proposing to use it in
effective, enriching programs.

This added time would allow
schools to fully pursue the sciences,
social studies, the arts,
foreign languages, health, and vocational
and technical skills, and to
add social-services supports, recreational
activities, off-campus learning
opportunities, and a wide range
of curriculum enrichments.

Too often, we create false
dichotomies in education.
Lately, it is the battle between
standards advocates
and those who support educating
the “whole child.” As a standards
advocate who believes in the power
of the standards movement to
achieve both excellence and equity,
I cannot imagine advocating for educating
anything less than the
whole child. But the high expectations
and real accountability that
are hallmarks of standards-based
reform are forcing us to confront
the inconsistencies in our current
system. One of the most prominent
is that we simply lack sufficient
educational time to achieve
all of our objectives.

High standards have forced us to
recognize this deficit, and have also
created the pressure that has resulted
in the narrowing of the curriculum.
Backtracking on standards
and expectations should not
be an option. Instead, we need to
fashion a policy response that creates
the time necessary to realize
our educational ideals.

Certainly, additional time must
be used well. More time for failing
practices is a nonstarter. But we
cannot hope to educate all students,
especially those who have suffered
the injuries of poverty, to high levels
in a wide range of competencies unless
and until we “right size” the
school day and school year. We
must reinvent the school schedule
and calendar to meet the needs of
today’s students.

S. Paul Reville is the chairman of the Massachusetts state
board of education and the president of the Rennie Center
for Education Research and Policy, in Cambridge, Mass.
He is a co-chairman of the National Center on Time and
Learning. The foundation-supported center was launched
this month, with headquarters in Boston.

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